Search for Secret Service Leader Intensifies as White House Security Is Tested

WASHINGTON — In the century or so since Congress first assigned the Secret Service the task of protecting the president of the United States, its top job has always gone to an agency veteran.

Like so many things in the Trump era, that may soon change.

Aides to President Trump are narrowing a list of candidates to lead the Secret Service, the beleaguered agency that protects the country’s top government officials and investigates certain crimes.

Unlike in transitions past, no clear front-runner has emerged. But top aides have been looking at candidates inside and outside the agency who can improve its morale and regain the credibility lost after a string of embarrassing lapses. They hope to name a new director in the coming weeks.

The search has taken on new urgency in recent days, as a series of attempted intrusions on the White House grounds — including a successful one in which a man was able to wander close enough to peer through the windows — have reignited concerns about management, training and security vulnerabilities thought to be on the mend.

Critics of the agency have seized on the most recent cases to amplify calls for the White House to recruit a leader from outside the Secret Service, which would be unprecedented in the famously hidebound agency’s modern history. They insisted that only someone untethered from the agency’s ways of thinking could institute the kind of reforms necessary to guide the organization.

“I still believe they have a deep-seated cultural problem,” Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview. “We need a transformative figure to truly change the culture at the Secret Service.”

The agency has been without a permanent leader since early this month, when its director, Joseph P. Clancy, stepped down to allow Mr. Trump to shape it as he saw fit.

Since Mr. Clancy’s departure, the agency has again been tested by a series of attempted intrusions at the White House. The most serious of them happened March 10, when a California man carrying pepper spray and a letter for Mr. Trump scaled fences and roamed the grounds for 17 minutes before being caught. It has prompted both the Secret Service and the House oversight committee to open investigations.

After receiving a closed-door briefing on the incident on Monday, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the oversight committee’s top Democrat, said it was clear that the agency needed to go back “under the microscope.” He told reporters that “a culture of complacency” was plaguing certain parts of the agency.

At the same time, the Secret Service has found itself grappling with unexpected costs and travel demands posed by protecting Mr. Trump and his large family. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the agency had requested an additional $60 million in funds for next year to help pay for the protection of Mr. Trump’s Manhattan residence and the family’s higher-than-expected travel costs.

Indeed, few jobs in government matter more to the fate of the president or the country than director of the Secret Service. Though the agency oversees a vast investigations arm targeting counterfeiting and other financial crimes, its reputation rests on its protection of the presidency and many of the country’s most important figures.

“Quite literally, at the end of the day, it is going to come down to the president’s comfort,” said W. Ralph Basham, who served as director of the agency from 2003 to 2006. “If you are going to turn the security and safety of your family over to someone, the president needs to weigh in.”

John F. Kelly, the secretary of Homeland Security, whose department includes the Secret Service, will also have a say in the decision. “The U.S. Secret Service is a vital federal law enforcement partner and the White House is working closely with Secretary Kelly on filling this important position,” Michael Short, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday.

In the interview, Mr. Chaffetz said he had pressed Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, and Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, to choose an outsider, in part because he saw no “natural fit” for the top job within its ranks.

But others briefed on the search pointed to several potential candidates within the agency or its pool of former agents. They include George D. Mulligan, the agency’s chief operating officer and No. 2; Robert Buster, who was the top agent in charge of President Obama’s security detail; and Mickey Nelson, a former assistant director overseeing the agency’s protective assignments, and now a security consultant. Only Mr. Mulligan is not a career Secret Service officer; he spent most of his career in the military.

William J. Callahan, the agency’s acting director, was briefly under consideration before he bowed out early this month, according to an official at the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Basham said he expected that the White House would also consider current or former leaders from the military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other law enforcement agencies.

Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s longtime private security director who followed him to the White House, has also been mentioned in connection to the job.

Whomever Mr. Trump chooses will inherit an agency still trying to recover from a series of flaps between 2011 and 2014 that badly hurt its credibility. Those incidents, from highly publicized cases of drunken misbehavior by agents and officers to the failure to prevent an armed private security guard from riding in an elevator with Mr. Obama, prompted an investigation by the House oversight committee and the creation of a four-person independent panel convened by the Department of Homeland Security. Both groups eventually made recommendations that the agency look outside its ranks to help clean up the mess.

The low point came in September 2014, when an intruder armed with a knife, Omar J. Gonzalez, made it all the way to the ceremonial East Room of the White House. The incident prompted the agency’s director, Julia Pierson, to resign.

“These things have really undermined the confidence of the American people, the confidence of the Hill and even to some extent of the White House,” Mr. Basham said. “And that is something the next director is going to have to deal with.”

The new director will also be expected to re-evaluate whether the agency should narrow its mission to pare down some aspects of its investigative work and increase resources for protection. The Secret Service, once a unit of the Treasury Department, investigates counterfeiting and financial crimes.

Mr. Clancy, who was brought out of retirement by Mr. Obama to help stabilize the agency, began instituting many of the reforms called for by investigators. During his two years in office, he hired several top deputies from the outside to professionalize its leadership, including Mr. Mulligan. He pushed to extend overtime payments, a popular move among rank-and-file personnel. He also hired more agents and successfully oversaw protection during a highly charged political campaign.

Patrick O’Carroll, a former Secret Service agent who is the executive director of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said Mr. Clancy’s successor would have a daunting task. Last year, in a survey of the best places to work within the federal government, the agency ranked 305th out of 305 agencies.